Carnivore Bloodwork: Best Case, Not the Whole Case

Dr. Abs pulled bloodwork from 50 of his carnivore patients — cholesterol up, triglycerides down, A1C and CRP better across the board. It's a genuinely good data set. It's also the best-case scenario, not the average one.

I'm reacting to walk through what those numbers actually mean, why cherry-picked wins don't tell you what happens to everyone on this diet, and what two Virta Health trials add to the picture: LDL-C did rise over two years, but it was driven by a shift toward larger, less atherogenic particles, and carotid imaging showed no progression of arterial disease.

Original video: https://youtu.be/CygSkDzDOHE

Studies referenced:
Bhanpuri et al., 2018, Cardiovascular Diabetology — PMID 29712560 — https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29712560/
Athinarayanan et al., 2020, Cardiovascular Diabetology — PMID 33292205 — https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33292205/

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🧬 About Dr. Lily Johnston
  
Dr. Johnston is a double board-certified vascular and general surgeon in San Diego, specializing in metabolic and cardiovascular prevention. She’s the founder of CorSight Health and a passionate advocate for reimagining how medicine approaches chronic disease.
  
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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

This video on carnivore blood work showed up in my feed, and I wasn't sure what to think. It is from Dr. Abs, who is a creator that I am not super familiar with. And you know, these videos usually go one of two ways. Either they're super great or it's kind of a disaster. But I wanted to know and watch it with you guys to figure out what is happening with Dr. Abs and these 50 carnivore patients. Let's go find out. If you're new here, I am Dr. Lily Johnston. I am a board-certified vascular surgeon. I also specialize in cardiometabolic medicine, so hopefully you will never need me as a surgeon.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Every carnivore blood work video on YouTube shows you one person's results. I got the data from 50. And all crabs, after retirement and dentistry, I went back to university as a postgraduate to study metabolic medicine and anti-aging medicine, amongst other things. I'm also certified in sports nutrition, which means I might just understand the metabolic side of diet and performance. Over the past 18 months, I have collected comprehensive blood work from 50 real patients following a carnivore diet and have measured a lot. Total cholesterol, uh HDL, druglycerides, A1T, fasting glucose, fasting insulin, inflammatory markers like CRP, hormonomarkers, and some of the less commonly discussed metrics that actually matter for cardiovascular assessment. The reason I'm showing you this data is simple. If you've ever had a doctor look at your carnivore blood work and panic, or if you looked at your own results and confused because one marker looks great and another one looks alarming, this video is going to give you the context you've been looking for. This isn't a um, you know, it's not a one-person anecdote. It's not an outlier case. This is 50 real patients, and their actual data tells a much more nuanced story than you might have heard elsewhere. And there's one marker where the results genuinely surprise me, one finding I didn't expect to see across this cohort. I'll get to that. But first.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

So I'm really excited to hear what Dr. Abs has learned across 50 patients. And I will also just say that people who choose a carnivore way of eating all come to it for some different reasons, but most people don't just randomly stumble onto it without some reason. And it's important to remember that this isn't a scientific study. These patients were not randomized. These people had some health issue or other issue in their life and believed that a carnivore way of eating would potentially help address that. And that's okay. That's good. We still want to understand what the impact is on their blood markers. And so I'm excited to hear what the sort of more cardiovascular-specific markers that Dr. Abs was mentioning will be and hear what he found. I do think 50 patients is much more powerful than just one. And I hope that we all learn something. So let's see what Dr. Abs has to tell us.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

Let me show you the data set, the methodology, and then we'll walk through each category of results together. So this is observational data from my clinical practice. It's not a uh randomized controlled trial. We don't have a control group.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

Sorry, Dr. Abs, I jumped the gun on you there. Um thanks for pointing that out.

SPEAKER_00 3:25

These are real patients who came to me, provided informed consent, and allowed me to track their labs over time. Now our cohort includes 50 patients, ranging from ages uh 22 to 74. The gender split, I've got everything written down here. The gender split is roughly 60% male and 40% female. So let's start with the marker that causes the most anxiety: cholesterol. This is the one your dots talks about. This is the one that's uh made some of you seriously consider whether you're making a mistake by eating carnivore. So let's look at what actually happened across all 50 patients. The mean total cholesterol across the cohort at baseline was 204 milligrams per deciliter after establishing their carnivore diet, and I'm averaging across patients at various time points here. Mean total cholesterol moved to 312. So it went up on average. But here's where the distribution matters. Some patients' total cholesterol only went a prime 10%. It's not a uniform response. Bear in mind that carnivore is exhibited very differently by every patient. If they eat 80% meat and 20% other stuff, that other stuff is different for everyone and it has a different effect as a result overall. Now, HDL. The one that people label is good, uh, even though the cholesterol carried is identical in both LDL and HDL, this one increased too. Mean HDL went from 21 milligrams per deciliter to 61.9. And that's a meaningful increase. And triglycerides dropped dramatically. Mean triglycerides went from 152 to 89. That's a 38% reduction on average.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

So I think uh this is exactly the pattern I would have expected to see in a lipid panel for anybody going either very low carb or carnivore. And um we'll see again, you know, what the LDL of cholesterol effect is here. I'm hoping we're gonna get some particle counts or some APOB so that we can understand not only what the cholesterol is doing, but most importantly what the particles are doing. Because as we know, the particles can carry a fair amount of cholesterol or a small amount of cholesterol, but it's the number of particles that is most important, even though the broader lipid community is, you know, largely just still focused on LDLC as the biggest measure. You know, those of us who are in the prevention space, especially when we're following a way of eating that's atypical, right? That's not a like standard um Mediterranean sort of higher carbohydrate plan. I do think looking at that particle count is really interesting. What I actually really wanted to focus on, though, was in a small sample size, if you're looking at the statistics, I would have been interested for him to present the whole distribution and to understand what, if any, difference there was between the median, which is the 50th percentile, and the mean, which is the total average. Why is this important? It's important because if you're thinking about this normal distribution, sometimes it's normal. In medicine, a lot of the time there is a tail, right? So there's this hump, and then there's this very long tail that goes out the other side. And this can skew how we interpret these measures of central tendency, whether that's the mean or the median. When there's this long tail, meaning there are, you know, people who are gonna have a total cholesterol of 200 and 300 and 400 and 450 and 500, right? These again, people who are maybe hyper responders or uh people who are very ill and had very elevated triglycerides. These are the things that we can see really skew the means, but the median is more helpful, right? That actually helps us reorient to this central tendency. And uh maybe he'll show this those data, maybe not. And maybe they're about the same, at which point, no harm, no foul. Let's keep going.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

Which means the triglyceride to HDL ratio, which is a much better correlate of cardiovascular health than LDL alone, improved substantially. Now, the mean triglyceride to HTL ratio across the cohort was 1.8 at baseline. And after establishing a carnivore, it drops to 1.1. And the optimal range, the range associated with the best cardiovascular outcomes, is said to be below two. So most of these patients are in a good place on that metric. However, I personally believe that symptoms are not the most important that symptoms are the most important thing, and not numbers. But that being said, I would suggest that less than one is ideal if at all possible. Uh many did actually I also agree.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

I personally like one as my ratio. I tell people less than two is good. Uh, one is optimal, and that is when your HDL is actually higher than your triglycerides.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

You get less than one at all, fantastic. However, some had their triglycerides increased because they're in the middle of improving their uh body composition and getting rid of excess fat. This kind of thing would skew triglycerides to HDL ratio calculations typically. Now, if you've had this measured, what is your trigger to HDR ratio? Drop it in the comments. I'd love to compare it to the cohort data. Uh, if cholesterol, though, is a worry marker, A1C and insulin are the redemption markers. This is where the data becomes genuinely exciting because this is where we see uh consistent improvement across nearly the entire cohort. Uh mean A1C at baseline was, if I can find it, 6.2%. That's pre-diabetic territory for many people. But after establishing their carnivore diet, mean A1C dropped to 4.5%. That's a 1.7% reduction on average.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

And more importantly, like I said, people usually come to this way of eating to fix something. And here is that proof, right? People are showing up as pre-diabetic, and it is exciting, right, to see people dropping their A1C down into the completely normal range. And we forget in medicine sometimes that this is possible, but this is such a powerful demonstration. Let's see what else that happens.

SPEAKER_00 9:24

Of the patients who began with elevated A1C above 5.7, which is a sort of conventional threshold for pre diabetes, all of them improved. And 12 of them had their A1C normalized to below five. Two patients who were type 2 diabetic, a baseline with A1Cs of 8.1 and 8.4, both achieved A1Cs below 5.5 within one month on a carnivore diet. That's type 2 diabetes reversal measured objectively. Now, fasting glucose followed a similar pattern. Mean fasting glucose dropped from 153 milligrams per deciliter or 8.5 moles down all the way to 90 or 5. And then for context, below 8 in the UK is considered normal fasting glucose. And these patients crossed that threshold consistently. Not that we were aiming for a number, of course, we wanted, you know, symptom improvement above all else. But here's the metric that matters most. And there almost nobody measures fasting insulin. It's the most sensitive macro metabolic health and physiological insulin resistance. Mean fasting insulin at baseline was 9.8 milli uh milli international units per liter. After carnivore, it dropped to 4.2. That's a 50%, 57% reduction. The optimal range for fasting insulin is below three, and we had approximately 38% of the Gohort achieve that.

SPEAKER_01 10:42

I think it's a little unclear what optimal fasting insulin is in terms of optimal metabolic health. Uh we have seen this anywhere from less than five, two to three. Um, you know, by comparison, what's normal on my lab slip, what shows as a normal fasting insulin, is anything less than 20, which is, in my opinion, severe uh insulin resistance or even diabetes at that level. But anybody who's 10, I still think is too high. Again, these uh patients of Dr. Abs were pre-diabetic mostly and coming in with a mean of around nine or 10 and getting that down into the three to four range is outstanding. Um, truly, in my practice, I'm I'm shooting for less than five. So four, three, two, somewhere in that range, I think is outstanding. I'm not sure we have a lot of really concrete data that three is better than four, or that two is better than three. I think if we're in that general range, we're in great, great metabolic shape.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

Even those who didn't quite reach below three saw dramatic improvement. HOMA IR, which is a calculated measure of insulin resistance combining fasting glucose and fasting insulin, improved from a mean of 2.6 down to 0.92. A HOMA IR below one is considered excellent insulin sensitivity. Almost 80% of our cohort achieved that. So when you look at metabolic health holistically, you know, glucose level, I'll put this down, glucose level, uh, insulin results and A1C, carnivore is genuinely transformative in my personal experience. It's not a marginal benefit, it's a category-shifting improvement in metabolic health. If your doctor's watching your A1C and you're fasting glucose and concerned about your carnivore diet, show them this data. This is what metabolic healing looks like for me personally. But beyond metabolic health, there are other systems at play. Many people adopt carnivore specifically because they're dealing with chronic inflammation, autoimmune conditions, or just general malaise. So let's look at what happens to inflammatory markers if I get writing here again. High sensitivity CRP, that's high sensitivity uh C reactive protein, the standard marker for systemic inflammation, mean CRP went from 3.2 milligrams per litre to 1.1 milligrams per litre. For context, below one is considered low inflammation. And of three is considered is associated with increased cardiovascular issues and systemic inflammation. So we saw a significant shift from elevated baseline to well-controlled inflammation. More than 75% of the cohort achieved a CRP below 1.5. Homocysteine, which is another inflammatory and cardiovascular market, also improved. Mean homocysteine went from 10.8 micromoles down to where has it gone? 9.1. The optimal range is below 10, so we moved the average into the better zone. Now, hormones. This is where things get a bit more interesting. Testosterone, at least in the male subset of our cohort, roughly 30 patients, increased meaningfully. Mean testosterone went from 490 nanograms per deciliter to 620. That's a 27% increase on average. I'm aware that the, I think it was the carnivore couple, they published testosterone. Results show increases from 440 to about 600, about a 35% increase, and those numbers generated really good engagement. Our data is slightly more conservative, but it's still real and meaningful. You have to understand that different clinics will have different patients come to them in different states of health to start with, and every patient transitions at a different speed, too.

SPEAKER_01 14:18

The hormone measures are pretty interesting. I think it's unclear to me whether this is secondary to improving overall metabolic health, whether this is specific to carnivore. And I don't know that this will stay consistent over time. There are a number of people who have been on carnivore for years who ultimately find that their hormone levels change and perhaps not favorably. It is possible that you can use this as a healing intervention for a period of time and then have a period of time where it's no longer the optimal strategy for you. What I want to emphasize is a very data-driven approach. And what I really love about this video is how Dr. Abs is really exploring all facets of the cardiometabolic health circle, uh, including hormonal health. And we're going to have to continue to follow these patients. I forgot if he said what the duration of time for measure remeasurement was for this cohort. Um, the drop in high sensitivity C-reactive protein is really interesting. It is faster than I would have expected, since I don't think that this was, you know, years of follow-up. I tend to find that HSCRP drops slowly, even in my keto carnivore patients, especially if they have uh excess fat to lose and that process is not super rapid most of the time, which is a good thing, right? We should have pretty measured, um, slow, steady weight fat loss. But I am, you know, clearly everything is moving in the right direction for the cohort at large. Whether that's true for all of the patients, I don't know. And we also are not sure because I haven't seen a statistical comparison whether this would meet statistical significance. But nevertheless, it's all moving in the right direction and something to um be optimistic about. Let's keep going.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

We didn't see any adverse effects or markers on markers like um SHBG. The improvements seem to be genuine increases in free testosterone, not just changes in um in the binding proteins. Now, thyroid markers, you know, at TSH, 3T3, 3T4, these varied more um between individuals. Because we had quite a few patients with either under or over active thyroid to begin with, and this made averaging the numbers a bit of a useless exercise here, unfortunately. But all patients with thyroid problems had resolution nonetheless, which is the important thing. What this tells us, I can put this down again. What this tells us.

SPEAKER_01 16:50

All patients with thyroid problems had resolution. I don't know what that means. Does that mean that they came off their thyroid replacement if they had Hashimoto's or hypothyroidism? I I don't know exactly what that means. I am excited that he's measuring free T3 as you know a good marker for thyroid health and not just sticking with TSH or even just free T4. So that's good. And I do agree that if you have patients who are replaced, it's a little bit challenging to figure out what's going on. But again, if if part of the criticism of this way of eating is that it does weird things to people's hormones over time, we do have to just be careful. And I'm not saying that that is true, by the way. That is just a common thing that comes up in discussion. But we just have to monitor, and then each individual gets to decide for themselves what is working for them and what is not, and monitoring free T3, measuring testosterone and SHBG, that's sex hormone binding globulin. Um, if you didn't catch that, those are important things. And uh again, if people are getting resolution of their autoimmune thyroid problems, that's great. I wish he had just been a little more clear about what he meant by that, but let's see what the takeaways are.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

Um collectively, is that carnivore isn't just about glucose and insulin, it's about reducing inflammatory load and supporting hormonal function. For many people, that translates into better energy, better body composition, better mood, better uh overall resilience, shall we say. For example, increased insulin from things like dietary carbohydrates limits the conversion of testosterone to estrogen for women. And you wonder why some overweight women go into early menopause. The root cause is what people should aim to address, not the symptoms.

SPEAKER_01 18:29

So um a lot of overweight women stop ovulating, which is not quite the same thing as early menopause, but uh it can be confused because they don't have a menstrual cycle, but it's um not quite the same thing. It is certainly a hormone problem, but for the sake of cardiovascular health, for example, we wouldn't necessarily diagnose them with premature menopause. It's not an estrogen insufficiency, really. It's an estrogen excess that's causing uh other issues in the body. So I just wanted to point that out because even though they don't have a period and it can feel not great, it is not the same thing as true menopause, which is the natural decline in all of the ovarian hormones. So just one little nitpicky point there. Let's keep going.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

The symptoms are just a way of measuring progress. Now, what do you actually do when cholesterol goes up on carnivore? Everyone will tell you either. LDL doesn't matter or uh LDL is everything. Go on statins. I'm gonna try and give you a framework. The actual framework I use with patients in my clinic. When a patient's LDL goes up on carnivore, here's what I do when it comes to the rest of the blood test. First, I check the full lipid picture. I look at HDL triglycerides and calculate that triglyceride to HDL ratio. That ratio is good, below one, and HDL is about 50. I feel that it's safe to tell the patient that they can relax. A lot of people may recommend a coronary artery calcium score, a quick uh non-invasive CT scan that shows whether there's any calcified plaque in the coronary arteries. Now, if the calcium score is zero or near zero, we have extremely strong evidence that LDL elevation is not translating to plaque burden or risk for that individual.

SPEAKER_01 20:21

However, so um he says he's measuring the full lipid picture. Again, I would ask about the NMR profile, right? Are we looking at the particles or are we just looking at cholesterol? Because that is also in my practice something that's very helpful. And I would say that just because your calcium score is zero or near zero, it that's a that translates to short-term risk. And if you are in the very old end of his cohort, right? If you're in your 70s and your CAC is zero, then I feel pretty confident that whatever impact we're gonna have from your elevated LDLC is gonna take years to manifest. And I'm not super worried about it because you don't have a huge plaque burden to begin with. If you are in your 20s, again in the lower end of the age range of his cohort, your CAC of zero does not reassure me. It does not mean that your elevation in LDL particles potentially, or your APOB or even your oxidized LDL is irrelevant. It means that you don't have much plaque burden yet at all, anyway, and we just can't see it with a coronary calcium score. Age is a huge confounding factor when we talk about how relevant a coronary calcium score of zero is. Now, does it mean for most people a very short risk, um, a very low risk of events in the short term? Yes, that's what that means. But it doesn't mean it's irrelevant for the long run. And it doesn't mean that if you decided you were going to do this for the next several decades, that it wouldn't have some impact on you. Again, we don't have to go all or nothing here. It's a question of Of what the burden of soft plaque is, what how likely it is that you will have it. Again, that's an age-related decision, a family history-related decision. There's a little more nuance to be had here when we're looking at a complete lipid panel with, again, these sort of more advanced markers. And when we talk about imaging tests and what's available.

SPEAKER_00 22:21

The reason I don't like to request these things by default is that there's a radiation dose associated with it that just isn't warranted in the vast majority of cases, in my view. So what if you get the scan? You know, what do you do? Because it's it's not going to change the advice around diet, exercise, sunshine, sleep. So what have you gained from doing it in practical day-to-day terms? Nothing. If we do it then.

SPEAKER_01 22:46

So I don't know that that's true. I think you gain, especially if you have other physicians in your sphere who are very anxious about your decisions, then having your CAC is uh or your other imaging, whether that's a C I M T, a C C T A, depending on your age, what's available and around you, you know, we have all kinds of imaging options, which we talk about in other videos here on this channel. But there are things that are helpful about it. It is a short-term warranty against risk for events, as I said. So you should probably, if it's a calcium score, you should probably think about repeating that in two to five years, depending on your age, or getting other imaging. Again, depending on your family history, uh, depending on what else is going on, right? Did your LDLC go up as the results of your carnivore diet, or has it been high your whole life? And perhaps this is a part of a genetic story that is not necessarily going to completely be ameliorated or fixed by your carnivore way of eating. We don't know that until we dig in a little bit deeper. And I do think it provides a little reassurance in the short term, or it provides some evidence that we have to be more careful about all of the things that we're doing for your health and wellness if there is plaque, especially if there's an unexpectedly high level of plaque. It doesn't mean that you have to stop carnivore and immediately go on all the meds, right? It just means we need to be thoughtful about how we proceed and talk about all of the options.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

Then at that point, the conversation becomes your LDL is elevated, your other lipid results are good, your calcium score is zero. So therefore we have no evidence of vascular disease. The LDL elevation is likely not a clinical concern for you. Now, I do have a few videos on LDL on this channel if you want more info on it, and I also have several lessons on it in my online school where I teach topics like this live every single week, and where members post their blood work and we all discuss it to help each other out. I'll leave a link for that in the description if you're interested. But the point is this we have a clear decision tree. We're not ignoring uh lipids, we're not panicking about LDL either. We're investigating it thoroughly and acting based on evidence. In our cohort of 50 patients, 43 had LDL elevations that would put them in line for statin therapy if you were to follow national guidelines. Of those 43, three did uh coronary calcium scoring for various reasons. All three had calcium scores of zero. They were counseled that their LDL elevation was not a cardiovascular red flag, that they felt genuinely better knowing they had actual evidence and not just a number and and a generic recommendation to go on a statid. So here's what I tell my patients if you're gonna have elevated LDL on carnivore, this is a good time to actually understand your cardiovascular health in detail. Because most people just get told the LDL is high and then get advised to take medication. But now you've got a chance to actually know whether you have plaque. Use that opportunity if genuinely warranted. Let me summarize what 50 patients is worth that the data actually shows us. First, metabolic health transformation is real and consistent, A1C drops, fasting glucose improves, fasting insulin plummet, and insulin sensitivity measured by HOMA IR gets dramatically better. If you're physiologically insulin resistant or prediabetic, carnivore for me is one of the most effective interventions we have. That's the data talking, not me. Second, lipid profiles are more complex than LDL alone. Yes, some people's LDL goes up, but most people's triglycerides go down, HDL goes up, and the ratio of triglyceride to HDL, which is a better predictor of actual cardiovascular issues, improves significantly. There's a net positive for cardiovascular health with the And, you know, Dr.

SPEAKER_01 26:41

Abs isn't the only one who has figured this out. So if you go back to the Verta health study, we will link that for you in the description below. They looked at the cardiovascular risk markers for the patients who came to Virta Health and went on a very low carbohydrate diet as a medical intervention to manage their diabetes. And while in some patients LDLC did go up, overall the total cardiovascular risk burden of those patients, particularly who were using this intervention for reversal or remission or treatment of their diabetes, whatever the word you want to use and whatever you achieve with it, overall cardiac risk went down. So LDL may go up, LDLC, and you can still have an overall improvement in your cardiovascular risk if your blood pressure comes down and your triglycerides come down and your HDL goes up. This is, again, the bigger picture. And I'm so heartened to see Dr. Abs taking that all in. And, you know, I do think more people benefit from imaging, and that's a useful thing for physicians and for patients. However, the bottom line remains this can be a very useful and therapeutic way of eating that does not necessarily increase cardiovascular risk for all patients. Great takeaway.

SPEAKER_00 28:02

Uh third, I think, inflammatory markers improve. CRP drops, homocysteine normalizes. And for many people, the cascade of inflammation that drove them to carnivore in the first place results. That matters for how you feel and for your long-term health. Number four. This is observational data from my practice. Okay. It's not a randomized trial. These are self-selected patients who chose carnivore and came to me for monitoring. That means there's some bias toward people for whom carnivore works. But it also means this is real data from real patients making real dietary decisions and seeing real outcomes. And I think that's a much more useful thing than a theoretical model. So what should you take from this? Well, honestly, I would say that getting blood is useful sometimes, only or sometimes only for people like me who want to study the biology of what's happening so they can teach it to others and add to our collective knowledge base. For the vast majority of you as an individual, I honestly don't think it's that useful to be honest. Say, what if your level of this or that is high? The advice of building muscle mass and scrapping processed food is still the same. So what's the point? And as well as that, every patient here in the in the data was so different to each other. Some we got longer transitions on the diet, some were very instant, some were underweight, some were overweight. You actually can't really take this data and apply it to yourself because you're that different to the next person that looking at stuff like this is purely for like entertainment purposes, to be honest.

SPEAKER_01 29:36

So I I want to drill down here for just a second because this is an interesting point, which is these are 50 patients, but they are 50 very different patients. We didn't actually, we saw the age distribution, but we didn't get a body mass index or waist circumference or body weight. We didn't get any sort of uh body composition metrics. And he just said some were underweight, some were overweight. We see, you know, changes in high sensitivity C-reactive protein. I would have expected that in overweight patients, that number is probably higher than in normal or underweight patients. And I do think that there is value in tracking these values, the labs over time for many patients, especially if they start to notice that the intervention changes in effectiveness or their symptoms change. Also, homocysteine is a good one. This is something that, if it's very elevated in patients, I wouldn't expect it to get a lot better on a carnivore diet only. I mean, homocysteine, he's discussing as a marker of inflammation. I think of it as a marker of your body's ability to methylate or activate the B vitamins that we take in from our diet. And some people just have a genetic defect in the methylation pathway. And you can eat all the ribeye you want. Uh, if you have an MTHFR mutation, you're probably not going to get your homocysteine really down in the normal range. So again, this is where the average in the population is maybe not as helpful as understanding if his patients who were very, very high still stayed over 10 or whether they came down two. I mean, if that were true, I would be worth knowing. I'd love to hear that. If not, then I say, yeah, there are some measures for which you can do some other things, like take a methylated B vitamin supplement if that is the case for you. You know, does it mean you don't continue to focus on having the best nutrition plan and getting great exercise and time outside in the sunshine and your sleep? Of course not. All of that remains foundational, no matter your philosophy on rechecking labs. But from my perspective, things like homocysteine as it relates to methylated B vitamins, vitamin D, which I see is deficient sometimes even in my patients who get outside, whether that's a gut issue, a soluble vitamin vet with fat issue, I don't know. But I still find that many patients need to supplement vitamin D to get optimal levels, or increase their focused time outside to get optimal levels, whatever the case may be. If they're deficient, I would like to know that so we can come up with a plan together to try to get people in that optimal range. But I appreciate the idea that overall this is simpler than we often make it, right? It doesn't have to be super complicated. The building blocks, the key pieces are in front of us. It is nutrition, food is our medicine, it is exercise. And we can talk about strength training versus cardio and zone two and intervals, but we all know exercise is important and the last bit, the last 5% is that debate about what kind of we're gonna do. The sleep thing, really big deal. Getting outside, getting some time with our friends and family and our community, hugely important. The rest of this, we're all just here talking about it to make videos and and uh make it seem harder than it really is. But let's finish out with Dr. Abs.

SPEAKER_00 32:58

And if you're thinking of going carnivore from this, or maybe for other reasons, here's my number one tip. And this isn't clickbait either. Lots of people try lots of diets and some get great results, some get poor ones. This comes back to everyone being so different. Carnivore means, roughly speaking, 70% animal products, as far as people say nowadays. Uh, but that 30% can make the difference between resolving heart problems and not. So, how do you determine what makes up the 70% and the 30% for you? Some people have problems and transition to carnivore thinking it'll resolve the issue, but um you know, eggs aren't agreeable for their bodies and they have no idea, so they keep eating them and think the whole thing doesn't work. The truth is, like there's someone in this world who gets the highest success rate I've ever seen clinically when transitioning people when transitioning people to this way of living. And she has published literature in resolving things like tumours and autoimmune conditions innumerable times. And what's amazing is that her transition for her patients is instant. There's no period of weeks or months to slowly cross over. That's because she's figured out how to do it perfectly. No transition period, and it yields a success consistency like you've never seen, and pretty much no adverse reactions of any kind. The clinic she works in is called Paleomedicina in Hungary, and her name is Sophia Clemens. I probably said it wrong though. Um her discoveries in this field have led her to label her method the PKD, Paleolithic ketogenic diet. In my view, all the clinicians you see making videos in this space, like l like me, so you know, I'm talking Ken Berry, Anthony Chafee, Richard Smith, Bart Kaye, many, many more, she is number one. I don't have time to fully explain here why, but honestly, she understands nutrition and its effects on the body better than anyone else I've ever seen. Read her work and it will pay you back for the rest of your life. In my own clinical practice, I employ many of her principles, and hopefully one day I'll be as good as her in clinical care too. If this data today changed how you think about carnivore blood work, share it with someone who's been worried about their labs, share it with someone whose doctor told them carnivore is dangerous and they need to stop. Um, they they might find the same reassurance and the same framework that I'm offering here. I'm not trying to tell people to ignore their doctors. I'm trying to give people the context and the tools to be better collaborators with their doctors.

SPEAKER_01 35:24

So, a couple last notes before I think of some final words for you, but I'm curious. This is an interesting thing. I haven't heard somebody say that carnivore is only 70% animal products and 30% other things. That's uh ketovore, is how I would use that kind of definition. In in my worldview, the way I have thought about carnivore previously, was that it was essentially entirely animal products and nothing else. Uh, and it's it's an elimination diet, really, of a kind. And some people will do sort of beef only, some people say no seasonings, some people will say eggs are okay, some people say no, some people say dairy is okay, some people say no. Carnivore, just like keto, just like all of the other labels that we use for nutrition, means different things to different people. And as we understand what we're doing, we can think about, you know, what is the most important component or aspect of this. He didn't mention anything about fat to protein ratios. The uh Dr. Zophia, uh Dr. Clemens, does actually have some thoughts about that and thoughts about organ meats and other things. Uh, I have read some of her work in the past, and it is very impressive. Again, people seek her out for very specific indications and tend to be um very highly motivated to follow that particular way. And she's getting great results. And so is Dr. Abs. This is another piece of the puzzle, right? And it means that we can all come to a way of eating that works for us. If you have heard me talk about nutrition before, you will know I don't make one broad sweeping recommendation. I can tell you what the biggest trials have said. I can tell you what the intervention is that will lower your LDLC if you care. I can tell you the interventions that I use in my practice, like keto and carnivore and low carbohydrate approaches to help lower fasting blood sugar and sugar problems, insulin problems, hyperinsulinemia. But everybody comes to this with a different philosophy and a different goal in mind. Keeping that in the back of your brain is the best thing we have to help you move forward. And we can do it for a time, and then we can change. We can adapt, we can evolve, we can tweak an approach, we can try a new approach, depending on the results that we're getting. But it means staying curious about how we're feeling, what our numbers are doing, and whether something that worked for a period may need to evolve and change. And the last thing that I'll say about this is he has a cohort that has done very, very well. Again, highly motivated. They have sought him out. In my opinion, this reflects the best case scenario for a keto carnivore approach or a carnivore style approach. And that's a great thing. It's great to have these people who are doing well and showing great progress because it means it might work for you. Will it for sure? Don't know. Don't know. You will have to try for yourself and see. Leave me a comment below if you have tried it and it's working for you. We are gonna give this video a like. Thank you, Dr. Abs. I am new to your channel, but I will be subscribing for more great content like this in the future. Until next time, guys, take really good care.